Great billows of dark clouds were rolling in from the north, and there were flashes of lightning followed by low and distant thunder. In the short time it took to get back to the town, the sun was obscured, the temperature dropped notably, and a few drops spattered against the sill. My aunt lifted her veil and looked out hopefully. “Perhaps our prayers will be answered,” she said, which amused me. People are always praying for the weather to change and, as it eventually must, they conclude they have been instrumental in effecting what was actually inevitable. My husband continually urges me to pray for rain or, after it comes, to pray for it to stop.
More and more drops fell. By the time we turned onto Rue St. Ann it was a steady downpour. We pulled up to the curb, where I was annoyed to see the front door wide open and Sarah standing outside under the abat-vent, in casual conversation with a mulatto man I did not recognize. “Why, it is Mr. Roget,” my aunt observed. She drew her skirt around her in preparation for her descent.
“And who is Mr. Roget?” I asked, frowning at this person who had the impudence to tip his hat to me before he turned and walked away. Sarah slipped back into the shadows of the doorway.
“He is the fellow who wanted to buy Sarah from your uncle,” she replied. “He was quite a pest on the subject; still I hated losing him. He is an amiable person and an excellent builder. You should see his faux marble; it’s a wonder.” And leaving me with this information, which conveniently omitted my uncle’s response to Mr. Roget’s suit, she called out to the coachman to take her hand, and leaped nimbly across the mud to the banquette.
IT RAINED HARD all night, and in the morning the air was cool, the sky a pale blue, and the city in a celebratory mood. I looked out the front door to see my neighbors having coffee on their balcony while all around them their house shook with the clatter of shutters being thrown open. Indeed, all up and down the street there was an echoing creak of hinges, the slap of wood against wood, and the occasional call of greeting as neighbors saw one another for the first time in weeks. My aunt came in dressed for church, pulling on her gloves. “I’m off to mass to give thanks,” she announced cheerfully. “Won’t you join me? Everyone will be there.”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“I don’t know how you manage without the consolation of religion.”
“Yet I do,” I said, smiling, having no wish to offend her. Father thought highly of Aunt Lelia and said she could even make a virtue of religion, which was high praise from him.
“Very well, I will pray for you, darling,” she said, coming to kiss my cheek. “And for your poor mother’s soul, which is in heaven.” Sarah came in carrying the breakfast tray. “In the dining room,” I said, waving her back. I followed my aunt to the door and watched her join a stream of pedestrians at the corner, all elegantly dressed, greeting one another lightheartedly. None, I thought, would name the true cause for his high spirits and say what each one felt: “Others have died, but I am alive.” I went back into the dining room and took a piece of bread from the plate. I called for Sarah, who appeared in the doorway, her eyes cast down.
She had kept out of my way since the night Mother died, hiding in the kitchen or staying in her hot room with the baby, appearing only when called for. I swallowed the bread, watching her. She seemed to stiffen before my eyes, to become stone, even her eyes didn’t blink; it is a trick she has. “You must know,” I said, “that servants are not allowed to receive visitors at the front door.”
“Yes, missus,” she said, moving only her lips.
I sat down at the table and tore off another bit of bread. “Pour me some coffee,” I said. She picked up the pot and leaned over me, directing the hot black stream into my cup. I was certain she knew I knew all about Mr. Roget. “Who was the man you were speaking to yesterday?” I asked.
“His name Mr. Roget,” she said. She had a cowed look about her, expecting the worst.
“What was his object in coming here?”
She set the pot carefully on the trivet, then stepped back so that I couldn’t see her. “My brother sent him to tell me he got work on the docks.”
“Who has work? Mr. Roget?”
“No, missus. My brother. He hired out from his master to work on the docks.”
“And what is your brother’s name?”
“Clarence.”
I sipped my coffee. A brother, I thought. What a clever invention. I wondered if she’d made it up on the spot or if she and Mr. Roget had worked it out together. “It’s unusual, isn’t it,” I said, “for a free man to carry messages between two slaves?”